Distilled Spirits
by queerteaoop
Summary: They save people. They hunt things. It's the family business... and it's on at 9/8c. Sam and Dean are the stars of the documentary-style reality show Ghost Brothers, but Dean knows beyond any doubt that ghosts and monsters don't actually exist. And he'll be damned if some phony, trench coat-wearing, amnesiac psychic is going to come in and change all that. [destiel, AU]
1. Chapter 1

[A/N: It's been forever since I posted anything on this website, but I'm trying to get back into it. I'm not sure how much things have changed here, but we'll see. This story is also on AO3, same title, same username]

* * *

><p>Dean's eyes pressed against the darkness, and the darkness pressed back. He brought his hand up near his face. The screen on the small device he held glowed a soft red, and beyond that there was nothing.<p>

"Is there someone here with me?" Dean's voice bounced against the concrete walls until it fell into the buildup of dirt and dust on the cellar floor and died where it lay. His eyes stayed on the screen.

A low whine, like a moan. Dean pulled in a breath and held it.

"Am I speaking with the spirit of William Duffy?" And again the cellar fell into silence.

Another moan. Dean's EMF detector had leapt up to maximum. It whined as it cycled up and down through several readings. Dean turned his head sharply to the left and stared. "What was that?" he whispered. And the EMF continued to spike and glow and moan.

This was going well, Dean decided. Sam was in the next room if anything went wrong. Not that Dean would let anything go wrong. He was a professional. He was—

A roar flooded into the cellar, dull and mechanical.

"Ah, fuck me," Dean sighed. He dropped his hand to his side. The cellar filled with light and Dean squinted and blinked until his eyes readjusted. "That take was fucking perfect." Sam swung around the doorframe into view as Dean looked at him, accusing.

"Don't look at me like that, I can't control planes flying over," Sam said with a shrug.

"Yeah, well, no more lock-ins near airports." Dean poked and fiddled with his EMF detector. Damn thing wouldn't shut up.

"If you ask me," said Bobby, who had followed Sam and was now poking at the camera tripod setup opposite Dean, "I think you coulda' been just a little less dramatic."

"People like dramatic," Dean responded. "And just remember we've got spooky noises to add in post. I've gotta be reacting to something."

Bobby shook his head. He probably wanted to grumble something along the lines of "kids these days and their disrespecting of elders and their dang telenovela acting," but instead he kept it to himself and returned to where their equipment was set up in the next room.

"You ready to go again?" Sam asked even as Dean was getting himself back to his mark.

"S'long as nothing else is going ruin the shot, sure," Dean said, "I don't want to be here all damn night." Sam gave a nonspecific noise of agreement as he made sure the night vision camera was set to record again. "Make sure you get my good side, Sammy." Sam laughed, punched his brother on the shoulder, and left to join Bobby in the equipment room.

And then it was dark. Dean opened his eyelids as far as they would stretch and felt the blackness against his pupils like a skin. He lifted the device in his hand and looked at the soft red glow...

* * *

><p>"...and I'm Sam. We're the Winchesters."<p>

"My brother and I travel across the country to seek out the paranormal."

"We've been to some of the most haunted places in America, armed with only a camera and the truth."

"We contact spirits, gank ghosts, and exorcise your demons. So if you've got evil spirits in your neighborhood, tell 'em the Winchesters are coming."

"Saving people."

"Hunting things."

"The family business." The two finished their speech in unison. A black car drove away down a dirt road in a swirl of dust and the screen faded into black.

"So what do you guys think?" asked Kevin, the intern, replacing the cover over his ipad screen and looking around eagerly. "I took some footage from last season and edited it with the new dialogue."

"Nice," Dean nodded his approval, "The part with the Impala was an excellent touch." Sam rolled his eyes. Dean liked anything that featured his beloved old muscle car.

"Good job," Sam congratulated Kevin, and the boy was happy that his all-nighter hadn't been a waste of some much-needed sleep time.

Kevin Tran, intern, was barely old enough to be the bar that served as current-temporary-show-headquarters. He had only applied to this position on a whim, telling himself that he probably wouldn't even get a reply, and that if he did get a reply, it probably wouldn't be a real job offer, and that if it were a job offer, he probably wouldn't accept. He probably should have instead spent his summer doing something practical, like making copies and coffees for a fortune-500 CEO. But everything had run contrary to his expectations and working alongside some real-life (fake) ghost hunters was even better than any economics major with a side interest in horror films could have ever hoped. He very nearly wanted to ask for a permanent position with the show instead of returning to school in the fall, but he could imagine the sort of vengeful retribution his mother would then rain down upon him for the rest of all eternity.

"I reckon' Crowley will like it even more that last season's open," Bobby speculated, running a hand over his beard to smooth it in an act of well-hidden neuroticism. "I'd be careful about doing all this extra free work for the show. You know how fond 'ol Crowley is of all that 'saving people, hunting things' crap. You watch, he'll snap this bit up, won't pay you a dime."

"Well, I'd be careful about saying his name too many times," Dean warned, the lip of his beer hovering close to his mouth, "You know what they say about the devil. And TV producers." Bobby barked a laugh, Sam smiled, Kevin glowed with the feeling of inclusion, and Dean drained the last of his bottle and signaled the waitress for another. The bar wasn't very active, and she returned quickly, giving Dean a half smile as she left. He winked back at her with one of his own basic-cable-TV-star grins.

With his new drink, Dean raised his hand in a toast. "To Ghost Brothers season two."

"To Ghost Bros!" Sam echoed, and clunked the base of his bottle into Dean's.

"To gullible people and crap TV," Bobby added.

"To reality TV," said Kevin-the-intern.

"Idn't that what I just said?" Bobby shot back. The four of them laughed and drank, letting an easy quiet fall over their conversation.

"So," Kevin swallowed his sip of beer (he'd never much cared for the taste, but he'd adopted a when-in-Rome attitude when it came to the Winchesters. It had been weeks since he'd learned not to shiver and grimace with every swallow—although his tendency to flush bright red after more than one drink was another story altogether), "You guys really don't think there's anything, you know, out there?"

"What, like anything supernatural?" Dean scoffed, "Nah. Sammy here'd be too scared of the dark to do this job if there were." Sam rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored the comment. "Why, do you?"

"Not really. I've seen too many bad movies," Kevin explained simply.

"We've been doing this long enough, and I've never seen anything," Sam reasoned. "Maybe a few weird things, but nothing that can't be explained. I mean, when we were kids, way before we got the show, we were still going around with our dad, cleansing houses of whatever people thought was there." He shrugged. "Dad was a con man. But we'd get a paycheck, and they'd get to sleep better. Made a good name for ourselves, y'know?"

"And now," Dean continued, "We get bigger paychecks and adoring fans." He shrugged, as Sam had, in subconscious mirroring of his younger brother. "At this point I don't think I'd believe in anything supernatural even if it descended on a stripper pole and gave me a lap dance."

"You haven't seen my wife angry," Bobby cut in, "I swear she's possessed sometimes."

"There's nothing supernatural about you leaving the seat up," Sam laughed and leaned back in his chair.

"You don't know that," Bobby joked back, "Maybe I got a haunted lavatory."

"And maybe we can make an episode about it," Dean grinned, "Me and Sam can come exorcise your toilet demon." Bobby cracked a smile but said nothing. Again, the group fell into an easy pattern of companionable silence and occasional banter and talks about where their road would take them next.

* * *

><p>"Another day, another seedy motel," Sam sighed, taking a look at their latest sanctuary. Today's theme was pictures of lighthouses and dirty orange carpet and unwashed bedclothes.<p>

"At least the studio pays for it?" Kevin searched for anything positive.

"Would it kill the studio to spring for a Sheraton?" Bobby groaned as he lugged his bag inside.

"I nominate the guy that just spent the last ten hours wedged in a crawlspace to take the first shower," said Dean, pointing towards himself and throwing his duffel onto one of the queen sized beds. "After we send this one off I don't ever want to hear the words 'Plainesville Baptist Church' ever again." He grabbed a change of clothes and ziplock full of shampoos and body washes and razors from his bag and headed towards the tiny bathroom, calling back "See you in twenty" over his shoulder.

Showering was the only time he had to himself while on the road that was completely free of cameras and people who would eventually get on his nerves (yes, even Sam). Still, other than washing away his dust and cobweb outer layer, Dean used this time to think about all the work he'd be doing at their next filming location. He ran through a mental checklist of what they should do at this new place and what they should "prove" based on its backstory and the supplies they'd need and ways to convince Sam that it was his turn to do the grungy work while Dean took on the easy EVP sessions. By the time he'd washed his hair three times (there was no fucking way he was going to let some hitchhiking spider make a nest up there, no sir), he'd worked out most of the important details. He dressed quickly and rejoined his brother and crew feeling more relaxed and optimistic than he had a short while ago. Until he saw their faces.

"Who died?" he asked, rubbing his towel against his hair to dry it. He took a chair at the room's small table beside Kevin, who was busy on his laptop making preliminary show edits. The kid was an impressively hard worker, and even though most of the show came together under the hands of executives (and many other unpaid interns) at a remote studio far from where they filmed, Dean was surprised they'd ever made it through so many episodes without the early editing decisions that Kevin could make. The little guy was good at what he did.

"Crowley called," Bobby said shortly.

"Told you you'd accidentally summon him one of these days," Dean teased.

"Very funny. There's been a change of plans, we're not headed for Michigan anymore."

"What? But we've been talking about going to the Washburn House for months now." There went Dean's planning. "So where're we headed now?"

"Virginia," Sam answered. "Apparently there's some new healer or psychic or something making a big deal of himself out there and Crowley wants—"

"A psychic?" Dean waited for Sam to say that he'd been joking. He hadn't. "Man, I hate psychics... You remember that time we had that old crazy lady on?"

"Missouri Moseley," Kevin supplied, not looking up from his laptop.

"Yeah," said Dean. "Even if she was a fraud, she still gave me the creeps."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You only dislike her because you made a pass at her niece and she whacked your knuckles with a wooden spoon."

Dean looked scandalized. "Sam, I carried around bruises from that for two whole weeks."

"Anyway," Bobby stopped the two brothers before they could escalate to some kind of convoluted pissing contest—yet again—, "Crowley got this guy to agree to be on the show but he's not going to wait. Apparently it took some convincing and they really want this guy. So it looks like we're headed to Virginia."

"Oh joy," Dean said flatly, and then stood, cleared a space for himself, and let his body collapse onto the rickety bed, where he was asleep almost instantly.

* * *

><p>"Dude, Sam, get this…" Dean pushed open the door to yet another motel room (this one happened to be deer themed with a subtle hint of stale, musky aftershave) and didn't spare a hello before he started talking at Sam. "Kevin lent me his pad-thing to look up fan reactions to the latest episode, and just listen to this one guy: 'a douchenozzle in a leather jacket with an overcompensating machismo complex' yeah okay, buddy, come say that in front of me and I'll overcompensate your ass."<p>

He could feel Sam's raised eyebrow judging him from across the room. Dean glared back at his brother for a few seconds. "Shut up, Sam," he said after a while, giving up.

It was then that he finally took notice of the stranger who was standing behind Sam, half obscured by the man's large frame. Dean could hardly blame himself for overlooking the guy at first; he was wearing a plain dark grey suit and a blue tie and had a tan overcoat draped over one arm, and overall he projected aura of extreme, unnerving, averageness. But he stared back at Dean with tired-looking eyes that didn't blink nearly as often as they should.

"Who's this?" Dean asked, still looking over the man as he came to stand beside them. "Is he a lawyer? Do we need a lawyer again?"

Sam shook his head. "He's the psychic Crowley called about." Dean shot him a look that clearly said this guy? as the so-called psychic held out a hand towards Dean.

"Castiel," said the man. Dean hadn't expected such a low, gravelly voice to belong to this average-seeming man, and he found himself needing to resist the urge to lower his own voice to match.

"Uh, what?" He'd grabbed the man's hand, but his brain seemed to have stuttered to a halt before he'd remembered that he was supposed to shake it. His hand was warm, pleasantly so. It was an odd thing to think about, Dean realized, but the sensation that seemed to be spreading into Dean's hand and up his arm was hard to ignore. Dean found himself wondering if his hand had really been that cold before, or if this man was just abnormally hot.

"My name," the man clarified, finally blinking as he tilted his head a bit and looked at Dean curiously. "It is Castiel."

"Oh, right," Dean remembered himself, and recovered into a proper handshake. The man— Castiel, didn't seem to have noticed the long pause. "Dean Winchester."

"I am aware," Castiel said simply as they dropped hands.

"You got a last name, Castiel?" Dean asked, trying out the name in his mouth for the first time. Castiel's head gave the tiniest of shakes, but he didn't break eye contact with Dean. It never occurred to Dean that he could be the one to look away first.

"This is the only name I remember," said Castiel.

"You started to say something about an accident," Sam prompted, and Castiel turned away at last. He looked at Sam with mild interest, but did not hold Sam's gaze the way that he had held Dean's.

"Yes," said Castiel. "I was found a short time ago, and Castiel is the only name I have." He paused. "The other two members of your team are going to return soon, and they will have the same questions that you do. Perhaps it would be best to wait so that information does not have to be repeated." Sam and Dean shared a long skeptical look, but agreed that Castiel had a point.

Only a few minutes of awkwardly sitting on the sofa on either side of the silent and stoic Castiel had passed when they heard the scratching of a keycard in the door and Bobby and Kevin entered, laden with plastic bags and smelling of Chinese takeout. They each noticed the new addition to the room immediately. Introductions past, the questions began anew.

"Wait," Kevin stopped Castiel before he could tell his story again. The others looked at him expectantly. "The episode is supposed to be focused on him, right? Well, if we just record this now as an interview, we'll have more the work with later." Dean nodded his approval. Smart kid.

And so they set up two of their daytime cameras and made sure the lighting was okay and decided that the peeling wallpaper behind the couch added some character to Castiel's otherwise dull outer shell (and the pattern wasn't so offensive that they'd get complaints, again). Their whole production would have probably been easier with a larger crew, in theory, but they'd tried that for a few episodes in season one, and it hadn't ended well. Bobby still saved a few evil stares for anyone who got greasy fingerprints on his equipment, and Dean still had a scar on his back from that bar fight.

Castiel was patient and silent as the other men fussed over angles and sounds. It was weird. He didn't even fidget. And once the cameras were set to record, he began speaking in his strange low voice again, telling his story with apparent honesty, but little inflection.

"My name is Castiel," said Castiel, looking into the main camera as he had looked into Dean. "The first thing I remember was a hospital in Petersburg three months ago." Sam and Dean exchanged sideways glances. What was with this guy? Castiel continued without pause. "There may have been some accident that brought me there, but I do not know. I awoke with the name Castiel. I do not know if I was anyone before. They tell me I'm psychic."

Dean watched Castiel, calculating. Either this man was the best con artist he'd ever seen, or he was certifiably crazy. This was all fucking Crowley's fault.

"And, beyond that," Sam prompted, in a clear effort to make his voice come across with neutrality, "When did you start to notice that strange things were happening?"

"Immediately," Castiel answered. He looked to Sam for a few seconds, then to Dean, and then back to the camera lens. "I can hear things; a constant stream of information. And I could see the souls that were trapped in the hospital. I was there for some time." He squinted into the space in front of him, as if seeing some memory they couldn't. Dean wanted to ask if he had been held in a psych ward, but decided to hold his tongue. Before Sam could ask another question, Castiel blinked and resumed. "After I healed a pastor's wife of her severe arthritis pain, the couple gave me a home. I have been providing my aid to others ever since."

Dean added 'religious nutjob' to his mental list of things this guy could be (among other choice words that would never make it to the final edit of a basic cable TV show).

"So what made you agree to come on our show?" Dean asked with a small laugh, genuinely curious, "Cash flow from miracle healing dry up?" Bobby shot him a dark look. They were supposed to be presenting this Castiel guy as a real psychic, not trying to prove that he wasn't. But Dean couldn't resist. The dude's motivations were shady. And now he was doing that thing again with his eyes that made it impossible for Dean to look away.

"I could be well compensated for my services if I so desired," Castiel explained. His voice had a slight sharpness to it now, and that made a chill settle over Dean's shoulders for reasons he couldn't quite grasp. "But I do not." He looked down, finally, at his hands folded in his lap. "I have seen your show. You claim to seek the truth, and yet everything you do is fake." There was a collective uncomfortable shuffle. He wasn't really supposed to know that, at least not until he'd signed nondisclosure contracts.

"Well—" Dean started, but Castiel looked up at him through furrowed eyebrows and the words died behind Dean's tongue.

"Your previous falsehoods are not of import," Castiel all but growled. "You say you seek the truth, and so I am here to show it to you."


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't like him."

"No arguments here."

They'd sent Castiel away after it was clear that they'd gotten all they could from their pre-show interview (and it was going to be a hell of a thing to edit as it was). Dean now watched him from the window of their motel room. Castiel hadn't come in a car or with anyone else, he was just walking.

"No really, I don't like him," Dean repeated, turning around and ticking off on his fingers as he spoke, "I don't like his story, I don't like his weird way of talking, I don't like his fucking straight-backed posture, and I don't get what his angle is."

"He is pretty intense," Sam half-agreed, "But maybe he doesn't have an angle."

"Everyone's got an angle, Sammy," Dean countered.

"Not necessarily," Sam argued, "Whether it's really true or not, I think he actually believes what he was telling us."

"So either he's a good actor or he's schizophrenic with a few lucky coincidences," Kevin added from the other side of the room.

"Well," said Bobby, shrugging, "If it makes for good television, I guess we're stuck with him for now.

Dean didn't particularly want to spend another minute with Castiel. The so-called psychic creeped him out in ways that the others didn't even seem to have picked up on. It was his eyes mostly. They were magnetic, and they stared through Dean while Dean stood paralyzed. It was as though he could feel them rubbing up against the thoughts and secrets that lived in the darkest parts of his mind, the things he would never imagine saying aloud. That was, of course, a ridiculous idea, but it added to Dean's overall mistrust of the strange man. At least, he reasoned to himself, Castiel would only be with them for a few days at the most.

* * *

><p>"So, all we need you to do is walk through a couple rooms and tell us what you're feeling," Dean explained, his arms crossed and his chest puffed out. So far, Castiel hadn't been great at following directions (considering most of those directions involved pretending to see and talk to spirits that, he vehemently insisted, weren't there at the time and that he wouldn't fake his abilities). Dean tried staring the other man down. How the hell were they supposed to get anything done with this nut job around? Had anyone even screened this guy before they tried putting him on the show? Castiel stared back mildly.<p>

"That sounds quite reasonable," Castiel agreed. Dean half wanted to give him a good shove to his trench coat-covered chest to see if he would react with anything other than monotonous neutrality.

And so they wandered through the many rooms of a two-story colonial as Castiel looked at walls and objects with a look of deep concentration. The property, which lay hidden in the back woods of some backwater town (of-fucking-course), was reportedly one of the most haunted in the area, having passed from terrified owner to terrified owner. It had settled in the hands of an interior decorator who had hoped that all that was needed was some dedication and some fresh paint before the place was sellable again. But after having spent a few nights in the house herself, she found that that wasn't the case. Sam and Dean were fairly certain that the house's reputation was creating a circular effect of fear that had made its way back to this freaked out woman, but a job was a job.

Castiel stopped in the center of the living room, looking down at his feet. It was the first thing he'd done besides look constipated since they'd started their tour.

"Here," he said, turning to where Bobby was holding the camera. Dean stepped forward to join him.

"Here?" Dean asked, his well-trained on-camera demeanor letting none of his skepticism leak through. "What's here?"

"This is where Joe Fletcher spirit is strongest," Castiel replied. He was squinting at the ornate carpet beneath his feet with intense interest.

Dean's eyebrows shot up before he had a chance to stop them. "You have a name already?" Usually their guest psychics waited until the very last minute, if ever, to reveal names. Usually they went with a lot of hand waving and spoke of vague presences first.

"According to county records," Sam said, flipping through some papers in his hands, "Joe Fletcher was the original owner of the property. He died in 1957 of an-"

"An aneurism," Castiel concluded, still staring at the rug. "Here."

The conviction in Castiel's voice made that strange chill settle over Dean again. Okay, so the guy had done some research. And he was convincing. Didn't change the fact that he was just working some angle.

Castiel looked up and Dean expected another impromptu staring contest, but Castiel was looking through him and just over his shoulder instead. Kevin was there with the second camera, but Castiel didn't keep his eyes on him for long. He turned his head slowly, as if tracking something making a path through the room, and then stood with his eyes focused on the air to his left. And he stilled.

"Well?" Dean prompted. Castiel blinked out of his momentary trance and turned to Dean with a sharp, neck-cracking motion.

"We need to leave. All of us," he said. He took a few careful steps off the rug. "Now!" he growled when the others didn't follow suit. And then he disappeared into the hall with Bobby behind struggling to keep him in frame.

Outside, Castiel didn't stop his long strides until they were out of the long shadow of the house in the late afternoon sun. He was hunched slightly, taking in long breaths and letting them out slowly. His face looked pained. Dean watched the cracks in his demeanor grow and felt a stab of sympathy; maybe there was something to Sam's theory after all, and Castiel really believed that he'd seen something. And that something had pushed him to the edge of a panic attack, apparently. Dean placed a hand on Castiel's shoulder.

"Hey, you okay, man?" Dean asked. There was no response. "Castiel? ...Cas?" Castiel shivered, despite his many weather-inappropriate layers. Dean made a cutting motion to Bobby and Kevin. They didn't need this to be on camera.

Castiel tilted his chin back and put his face towards the sky and his breathing steadily, gradually, returned to normal. "I'm sorry, Dean," he said quietly. His voice sounded almost like it usually did, but it had ragged edges that Dean hadn't expected from him. He sounded exhausted. Castiel shook himself a little, and then straightened out and addressed the Ghost Brothers crew levelly. "You may continue filming," he said, and his voice was normal again. Bobby and Kevin exchanged looks, and then went about setting up their shots again.

"You sure?" Sam asked. He was standing beside Dean, who had just noticed that his hand was still resting on Castiel's shoulder. He dropped it to his side and took a step back. Castiel paused, and then nodded once.

"I am," he said simply.

"Can you tell us what happened in there?" Dean asked, going into on-camera mode again.

"Joe Fletcher has spent a long time in this house," Castiel replied. He spoke to Dean directly, not Sam or the camera. "He is… confused. There are always strangers here. He doesn't like them touching his belongings, many of which are still in the house, and they ignore him when he tells them to leave. So he becomes violent."

"So, then, it's a matter of communicating with him, right?" Sam asked. "Getting him to understand that he's died?"

"No," said Castiel, now turning to Sam. "It's too late for that. I have never been around a soul that holds such a grudge. He was not a kind man to begin with, and he has had a long, long time for this anger to build. Anything that could have once been good or understanding in Joe Fletcher's spirit has been stripped away." He looked down and away from either brother. "I haven't been doing this for long," his voice dropped to just above a murmur, "But I have never felt this kind of rage. This kind of… evil."

Castiel's words were impressively ominous and, good television aside, Dean found himself very nearly wanting to believe that Castiel was actually speaking the truth.

* * *

><p>Evening stretched the long shadows to the point of breaking, and night settled over the two-story colonial as the group made their projected plan for the night. Castiel had insisted that there was no difference between night and day when it came to the prevalence of spirits and that there was no magical barrier of daytime that protected anyone. It was quickly explained to him that the whole point of making this show was to give people their desired fill of fear, and that no one would be particularly scared of two tall, handsome men in plaid traipsing through a nicely furnished family home in broad daylight. And so the crew set up their equipment and waited until any surrounding lights had vanished. Castiel remained outside.<p>

"Okay." Dean stood in front of Castiel again and tried to ignore that thing he was doing with the not blinking and the standing just a little too close for Dean's comfort. "Sam's in there now doing a general sweep of the house for EMF." With their fake EMF detector, Dean didn't say. The best way to deal with Cas, Dean decided, was to try to go along with his delusions. "And Bobby and Kevin are monitoring the night vision cameras from the van. You and me are gonna do a question session in the living room, we're just going to ask some general questions and see if we can get a response. Don't worry, though, even if we don't get anything that shows up on video or sound. You can do a little psychic translating, alright?"

"You still do not believe me," Castiel said. "And your pity is misplaced.

"Well fine then." Dean threw his hands up in defeat. "Whether I believe you or not, we still need to get footage ofsomething."

Castiel nodded after a moment. "Do you have salt?" he asked.

"Salt? You want to do the salt trick?"

"Trapping spirits within salt boundaries is one of the few methods you employ that has some basis in reality." Dean decided to let the comment slide.

"We can grab some from the trunk," he said, nodding to where his Impala was parked by the side of the road. "Try not to make too much of a mess in there, though. I don't want some crazy interior decorator coming at me with throw pillows because we messed up her antiques."

Soon he and Castiel were back inside the house. Dean aimed a handheld camera towards the living room carpet where Castiel was putting the finishing touches on a neat salt circle. They were in almost total darkness and Dean could only see Castiel's actions through the green glow of the tiny camera screen. Otherwise, there were only shadowy outlines. Dean swung the camera around to point to his own face.

"Castiel is now setting up a salt ring to restrain the spirit of Joe Fletcher in the exact spot where he died," Dean explained. "Hopefully this will concentrate the spirit enough so we can try to make contact."

"His soul has spread throughout this house." Dean turned the camera back to Castiel, who now stood stiffly beside his circle. "That is how he has been able to move objects and cause terror throughout this space." He looked around the room. "I can feel him fighting it, but I believe he will manifest here soon."

As they waited, Dean swept his camera around the room. His heart pounded in anticipation. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he was really getting into this one. It actually felt like something was about to happen.

Thunk.

Dean jumped, genuinely startled by the dull noise. He focused on Castiel again, as if he had been the one that had made the sound. Castiel was looking towards one wall with his eyes wide. There was a bookcase there, and one book now lay on the floor in front of it.

"Holy shit," Dean hissed. They were alone in the house. How had Castiel done that? Was it just the luckiest of coincidences?

Even as he watched through the tiny screen, another book slid from its shelf and fell to the floor with a thud. And then another. On an end table nearby, a glass figurine of an elephant flew to the wall and shattered.

"What the fuck," Dean breathed, just as urgently. His brain felt like it was unhinging. Sam had to be playing a prank on him. There was just no other explanation.

He heard ragged breathing and turned quickly back to Castiel. Only they weren't alone any longer, and Castiel wasn't the one doing the breathing.

Within the confines on the salt ring, there stood a man that Dean was able to see with his naked eye. He wore a dark suit and a round-brimmed hat and look of pure anger. He was also pale and glowing a faint blue. Looking at him was like trying to look through a haze of heat, though the room had dropped considerably in temperature, and Dean found that his eyes were having a hard time focusing. Castiel stood nearly behind the man, and yet Dean could still see him, as if each of his eyes were looking at two different images at once.

Anything he had been about to say— every curse word he had ever learned— left Dean's head immediately as he stood frozen in the wake of something that couldn't possibly be real.

"Leave," the man said, his voice was as clear as any human's.

"Joe Fletcher," Castiel said, and his voice was calm and even. "You are the one who no longer belongs here."

"Leave!" he repeated, turning to Castiel. Objects around the room shook, but nothing fell or broke. Castiel frowned and reached an arm over the salt line.

"Cas, don't!" Dean whispered, concern for the other man's safety overriding his temporary immobility. Castiel, however, disregarded his warning.

"I'm sorry for this," he said as he reached forward. He placed his hand onto the ghost's forehead, a surface that was, apparently, solid enough for him to touch. There was a flash of white light that blinded Dean's dark-adjusted eyes for a few seconds, and when he could see again, the screen on the night vision camera revealed only air between him and Castiel again. He stopped recording and dropped his arm limply to his side and then stumbled sideways until he found the wall, where he groped about for the light switch.

Castiel stood beside the salt ring as he had before, as mild looking as ever. In the light, the living room, though messy now, looked unnervingly— unbearably— normal. Dean ran from the house.

He reached the Impala and leaned heavily against it. He put the handheld on top of the roof and then ran both his hands through his hair. He kicked at one of the Impala's tires just to be doing something, anything, in response to the thoughts running through his head. He felt a scream bubbling into his throat and channeled it into a loud, voice-cracking "FUCK!"

Behind the Dean's muscle car, they'd parked their large equipment van. They often set up their monitors inside the van to look over earlier footage and decide what more they needed, which was where the majority of the Ghost Brothers crew was at the moment. Sam was the first to emerge at the sound of his brother's scream. He rushed to Dean's side.

"Dean, what's going on?" Sam's voice was filled with concern. Dean didn't like Sam seeing him this vulnerable.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel was there now, too, "I should have prepared you better for what was about to happen."

Sam looked between the two of them in confusion. "Did something happen?" And Dean laughed. He laughed, bitter and disbelieving and borderline hysterical.

"Yes, something happened," he said, looking Sam square in the face. "It's real. It's all real. He—" He gestured towards Castiel. "—is real."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Bobby was looking at him like he'd grown a second head. Dean rubbed a shaky hand over his face and grabbed the camera from the roof of his car. Wordlessly, he tracked to the right spot and handed it to Sam to play.

The three men crowded around the tiny screen and watched, confused and skeptical at first. But as the video played, they slowly transitioned to horrified shock. When it had finished, all three looked up at Dean again.

"It's real," he confirmed grimly. Castiel stood nearby, shuffling awkwardly.

"I should not have brought you in there for that," Castiel apologized again. "I wanted to show you the truth, but I was overzealous. Something could have gone wrong." He placed a hand on Dean's shoulder in imitation of Dean's earlier gesture and Dean felt a strange sense of calm wash over him. A tiny voice at the back of Dean's head told him that everything would be okay because Castiel was there and Castiel would make sure that nothing else would happen. His chest deflated with sudden relief, though he couldn't quite figure out why.

"So where did you send him?" Kevin, sounding like the kid that Dean tended to forget he was, broke them from their strange moment. "He's gone, right? Well where did he go?"

"Truthfully, I do not know," Castiel replied, "But I know that it is where he belongs and that he can't come back."

"Well that's all fine and dandy," Bobby interjected, "But what the hell are we going to do about this?" He pointed a stiff hand towards the camera that he now held. "We can't show anyone."

"He's right," Sam agreed, "We show one object moving on its own and we get angry letters calling us frauds. They'll think we faked it." He shook his head. "Even though this time we didn't. And Crowley will have our asses if we try to pass this off."

Dean pressed his lips into a hard line. "We'll say the camera cut out mysteriously," he said, "Right after the first book fell. It's boring, but it'll have to do."

"Do you want to film an explanation now?" Bobby asked. Dean nodded at him, and then at Castiel, indicating that the latter was free to remove his hand from Dean's shoulder any time. He did, and most of the calming feeling left with it. Ignoring the cold spot of absence on his shoulder, Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then looked into the camera lens.

"You got it working again?" he asked, already acting as soon as the cameras started to roll. He paused, then continued. "So we've just checked all of our equipment and we're back online, but we lost everything—and I meaneverything— for a while in that house. I can't describe the things that I just saw, but unfortunately we couldn't get it on tape. I've been doing this for a long time, and I've never seen a spirit so powerful." That, at least, was the truth. "He was strong enough to knock books from the shelves and drain our camera's battery. Thanks to Castiel's intervention, though, he won't be coming back to this house." He looked to Castiel briefly, then back to the future audience. "And hopefully neither will we. After tonight," Dean's voice was heavy and tired and worn, "I can honestly tell you that I have never been more scared in my life."


	3. Chapter 3

Four men sat around a table at a bar for their customary post-filming beers. They'd wrapped filming in record time and found a small local place that was still open that same night. But unlike their usual celebrations, this one was marked by stunned, introspective silence (as well as the addition of one extra participant). Castiel was worried and had elected not to leave Dean's side just yet, and Dean wasn't about to start complaining.

"Ghosts are real." Kevin's voice sounded hollow.

"Ghosts are real," Bobby echoed.

"What the hell have we been doing, poking around in these places?" Sam asked, half-rhetorically. "We've never seen anything like that before now. Why?"

"That's what I want to know," Dean agreed, giving a glassy-eyed stare to the table in front of him. He ran a thumbnail over the corner of the label on his beer bottle and picked at the stubborn adhesive. He picked and picked and picked.

"Strictly speaking, that was incredibly uncommon," Castiel addressed the table. His voice didn't seem to be capable of sounding soothing, but he was trying anyway. "For him to manifest in physical form that you could actually see and capture on camera is just a marker of how strong his emotional connection to that house was. I doubt that you'll see any more spirits anytime soon."

"Yeah, but you will." Dean turned to Castiel, who in turn allowed his eyes to wander around Dean's face, searching. "You see these things all the time. You really have got a… a 'constant stream of information' running through your head, don't you? How do you even cope with that?"

Castiel's face softened. Dean hadn't realized just how much tension Castiel carried around his eyes until it dropped and evened out for just those few seconds. Castiel looked tired, still, but years seemed to wash away from his features with just this one expression of what might have been either sadness or gratitude.

"It is the only thing I have memories of doing," Castiel said. "I don't know what living without these things is like, because they are the only thing I have ever known."

Unease drifted across the group again as they contemplated their drinks in silence.

* * *

><p>"Hello, boys."<p>

Dean breathes slowly in and out. Crowley's standard greeting never spelled good things for them.

"Crowley," he replied back with restrained neutrality. Sam placed his phone down on a small square of table that was free of plates and mugs and maple syrup. There was a low murmur of conversation around them in the diner, but Crowley's tinny speakerphone voice didn't seem to be bothering anyone particularly.

"Loved the footage you sent us." Dean could never quite tell if Crowley was mocking them or if his voice just naturally oozed extreme levels of smarmy arrogance. Maybe it was both. "I see you had quite the adventure in the Fletcher house. And I'm sure what you edited out was even more interesting. Things get a little too intense, did they?" He knew, god damn him, he always knew.

"Something like that," Bobby answered into his cup of coffee.

"So what is it this time?" Dean asked, "Are you sending us to pick up another psychic?"

"No, not another psychic." He sounded amused. That was never good. "But, speaking of which, how is Castiel?"

"He seemed fine when we dropped him off at that pastor's house in Virginia a few days ago," Sam replied.

"What a shame," Crowley sighed dispassionately, and nervous glances flitted around the table. "Where are you now?"

"Philadelphia, headed to that mansion in Connecticut with the ghost… horse…. thing," Dean said. "But you knew that, so why ask?"

"Well," said Crowley, "I took the liberty of giving an advanced screening of last week's early edit to a few interested parties. Had quite the reaction, to say the least." Again, the men looked at each other. Intern Kevin fidgeted awkwardly. He never said anything during these calls, even when it seemed like he wanted to.

"How so?" Dean asked after a moment had passed.

"They were quite receptive to Castiel," Crowley said, then chuckled; a truly ominous sound. "In fact, they found the dynamic between the two of you to be rather refreshing." Dean opened his mouth to say something, but Crowley continued. "Relax, squirrel, no one's replacing your moose. We are, however, expanding your motley crew to include your new psychic pal." Dean scrubbed a hand over his forehead in vague irritation.

"For how long?" Bobby asked.

"Oh, who knows?" Crowley responded, sounding falsely casual. "Maybe a few episodes, maybe the whole season, we'll see how things go. Maybe you'll end up wanting to keep him forever." Dean could imagine him sitting in his cushy corner office with is feet up on his desk as he thought of new ways to torture them. They couldn't argue back; he was the one signing their paychecks. "For now, I'd suggest you finish your lovely brunch and head back get him." He chuckled again. "Have fun."

The line went dead. Sam huffed a sigh and put his phone back in to his pocket.

"Well that's great," Bobby grumbled, "More driving."

"We're halfway there," Kevin leaned back from the table and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked tired, and Dean didn't blame him. "Couldn't Castiel, like, take a bus or something?"

"Something tells me Crowley wouldn't be his charming, friendly self if the dude got lost," Dean said, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

"He's right," Sam agreed, "Guess we'd better head back then."

"I can do it," Dean said, dropping his hand. At Sam's look, he continued. "It'll be easier for all of us if you all continue on in the van, and I can just take the Impala and get him."

"He's got a point," Bobby shrugged.

"I can go with you," Sam offered, "We can trade off driving."

"You and I both know I can get there faster by myself," Dean said, giving his brother a flat look. Sam refused to let Dean drive more than 15 over the speed limit, and his music selection sucked. "Look, you can go, start setting up, and I'll meet you there tomorrow." He punctuated his argument by filling his cheeks with a forkful of pancake and that was that.

* * *

><p>"Hello Dean."<p>

"Hey, Cas."

Dean stood beside the Impala and stretched his cramped limbs. Four hours of driving, and eight more to go— eight hours in a car alone with Castiel. It's not like Dean hated Castiel, at least now that he'd gotten to know him a little bit, but Castiel was about as responsive to Dean's pop culture-riddled conversational skills as a cardboard cutout.

Sometime around hour two, Dean had had enough stony silence.

"So," he said over the dim background sound of classic rock—Highway to Hell, as if that wasn't ominous as fuck—"How'd Crowley rope you into coming on the show again?" He cast a quick glance at Castiel, who was squinting at the road in front of them. Dean could almost see Castiel's mind working through Dean's choice of words. He was so busy imagining that Cas saying something like I don't understand, Dean, there were no cords or strings involved (given the way he'd reacted with blank stares the last three times Dean had used fairly common idioms) that he almost missed Castiel's actual response.

"I am not entirely sure," Castiel said, looking at Dean now. "But there is a kind of pull that tells me to go in your direction. I don't know what that is." He paused. "And I was worried about you."

Dean responded only with a slightly shocked nod, and Castiel didn't say more.

Dean was, therefore, trapped inside his own mind as the miles slipped beneath his car tires. And his mind was on Castiel. As reluctant as he'd been to have Castiel join the show, he knew it was probably for the best. Everything had gone all topsy-turvy when they'd filmed the last episode, and he couldn't just go back to a life where paranormal things didn't really exist (even if he really wished he could). And Castiel, strange and awkward as he was, was probably the key to navigating through this new reality.

But Dean still couldn't explain the sort of effect that Castiel had on him. When Castiel had said that he felt as though something was pulling him towards Dean, he'd given a name to a sensation that Dean had been feeling as well. He felt oddly comforted when Castiel was around, spirits or not. Castiel was weird, and Dean was beginning to like that.

Around hour four, Dean took a wrong turn that sent them on a long detour through the empty, rolling hills of Pennsylvania. He was blinking back the hypnotic numbness that had settled over him as the daylight faded, and an hour later his eyes were starting to droop. There was no pressure to get anywhere that night though, and so Dean eventually gave up on his failed goal of making the trip as short as possible, and pulled into the least unpleasant looking hotel. This turned out to be one of the midlevel chain type places that he'd stayed in from time to time. He used the 'emergency-only' credit card provided by the network. Crowley could suck it.

The receptionist had glanced between the two of them in that significant way that he was already used to getting when he was with Sam as she told them that they didn't have any double rooms left. He shrugged it off, and found his way to their single room with Castiel following silently behind.

The room was nice— generic, but otherwise non-offensive. Dean dropped his bag by the door and flopped ungracefully, face-first, onto the room's sole queen sized bed. He knew he should probably get up and take his day clothes off and brush his teeth and call Sam and tell him what as going on or he'd regret it all in the morning, but damn this bed felt nice. He could fall asleep right then…

Slight vibrations of the floor snapped him from his near-sleep state. Oh, right. He was hogging the whole bed meant to be shared with Castiel. Dean pushed himself up onto his elbows to find that Castiel was not standing by the bed, as he had expected, but rather stood staring out the sliding glass door a few feet farther away. The doors led to a small fenced in balcony and, beyond that, the Dean could only see the rush of headlights passing on the highway nearby.

Dean sat up and scraped a hand through his hair while he fished his phone out of his pocket. He sent Sam a quick text—in PA, spending the night— and then set about removing his shoes and shirt and otherwise making sure he'd feel as un-shitty as possible the next morning. By the time he'd emerged from the bathroom with the taste of spearmint mouthwash lingering on his tongue, Castiel was still standing by the glass door. He'd removed his overcoat and draped it over the armchair beside him, but was otherwise in the same position.

"Do you, uh, care which side of the bed?" Dean asked. He shouldn't have felt this awkward; he and Sam or Bobby or Kevin shared hotel beds all the time. But Cas was… well, he was different, to put it lightly.

Castiel turned and looked at him for the first time in a while. Dean was struck with the strange wish that he were wearing more than just boxers (even though it was summer, and it was hot as balls, and he'd never had any problems showing off his body before). Castiel looked through him and into him and he felt decidedly naked. Again.

"Either is fine," Castiel said, and it took Dean an extra half-second to remember his own question. Castiel hesitated, and then said, "Actually, I don't really sleep much. If the light doesn't bother you, I'd like to stay up reading for a while."

"Oh, uh, yeah, sure," Dean nodded his agreement, slightly surprised. Castiel reached down to his own small duffel at his feet and pulled out a worn-looking paperback. Dean didn't catch the title. Castiel turned on the small reading lamp beside the armchair and settled into it. He still faced the doors and the balcony and passing cars but his attention was now on his book and, as far as Dean could tell, that was where it was going to stay.

Dean's exhaustion hit him again. The bed sheets crinkled against him as he lay down; they were cool and smelled freshly laundered. This place really was a step up from most of the places where they stayed.

He spared one last look at Castiel, bathed in the soft yellow glow of the lamp and the red glow from neon signs outside. Dean watched him until his eyelids drooped closed.

* * *

><p>When Dean awoke, Castiel was gone. The bedding beside him was unrumpled. For one disorienting moment, Dean thought maybe Castiel had run away (deciding, like a sane person, not to involve himself in Dean's strange nomadic life). He thought he'd have to either spend the day searching this unfamiliar town for any sign of Castiel or end up in Connecticut empty-handed. But then he spotted Cas' duffel on the floor and his book on the table beside the lamp and his tan coat still draped across the armchair like a message telling him not to worry. The he became aware of the soft hiss of the shower running, and he relaxed back into his pillow with a long exhale.<p>

The room had a coffee maker, praise the lord. He found a small bag of ground coffee beside the minibar and emptied it all into the basket, finding that he didn't care about how much these sorts of places charged for things. While it finished percolating, Dean threw on a shirt and jeans and then glanced inside the fridge itself and found it stocked with nips of liquor. Not a bad selection, either. He grabbed a miniature bottle of Irish cream, cracked the seal, and emptied it into his mug of coffee in lieu of regular cream or sugar. Hey, it wasn't his credit card they were using.

Dean stood on the small balcony, leaving the door open behind him. The air was misty and cool and quiet; it was still early. The sun had come up only a little while before, and below him a street lined with fast food signs and convenience stores and other motels blushed in pale purple-red light. Across from him, a few cars whooshed by on the raised hill of highway. Dean took a sip of his coffee. It left a slight burn in this throat. He breathed in the cool morning air. The heat wave had broken like a fever in the night.

A few minutes later, there was a rustle of fabric beside him. Castiel hugged his elbows close to himself in what was a gesture of insecurity or of being cold, Dean didn't know. They stood that way for a while. Dean sipped his coffee. Castiel tracked the cars with his eyes as they passed.

"People think spirits are most common at night." Castiel's voice was quiet.

"Yeah?" Dean asked, "When is it really?"

"Dawn," said Castiel. He spoke with the reverence of a deep secret revealed and, Dean realized, maybe that was exactly what he was doing. Dean took a mouthful of his coffee and swallowed the question he wanted to ask: what do you see now?

They were quiet again for a while. The cars passed. Cas watched them. The light grew stronger, glinting orange off some broken glass in the road below. Dean finished his coffee and was considering going back inside for the rest of the pot when Castiel spoke again.

"Dean, can I try something?" he asked. Dean turned an inquiring face towards Castiel, but his words died at the way Castiel was looking at him with such a pleading expression. He gave a stiff nod. Castiel reached his hand across the small space between them. Dean tried not to flinch. Castiel's hand came to rest on the side of Dean's jaw, his pinky finger trailing down to Dean's neck and his thumb breathtakingly close to Dean's lips.

A warm sense of calm washed over Dean, as it had after he'd seen the ghost just a few days earlier. Castiel's face relaxed. The lines between his eyebrows smoothed as he raised them. His expression was a mixture of surprise and relief and something that Dean couldn't quite place, but somehow knew that he was feeling himself. It was more emotion than Dean could remember seeing from Castiel in the short time that they'd known each other.

"Amazing," Castiel all but whispered, and Dean felt a thrill run through him.

"What," was all Dean could say in response, his voice cracking against his dry throat.

"The voices stop." Castiel sounded thoroughly, impossibly tired, and yet happy at the same time. Dean's breath caught as something heavy seemed to settle in his chest. For a fleeting second, he imagined what it was like inside Castiel's mind, and he was terrified. "Everything stops." He closed his eyes. "I don't know how it's possible, or why. But it has something to do with you, Dean."

"Cas…" Dean didn't know what he was planning on saying. Moving his mouth had made Castiel's thumb twitch closer to his lips, touching them at the corner and making Dean forcefully aware of the thoughts and feelings welling up inside him. Crazy thoughts that Dean didn't want to acknowledge he'd been thinking since the first day he'd met Castiel. He'd refused to give them a name or a shape in his own mind, but Castiel's words and touch had catapulted them to the forefront of his thoughts.

Dean cared about Castiel. He had begun caring about him sooner than any other person who wasn't his brother. Dean wanted Castiel around, just to watch him do the weird things he'd do and to feel his company. Dean was, quite possibly, a tiny bit attracted to Castiel.

What in all nine levels of hell is happening? Dean felt dizzy. He tightened his grip on his coffee mug or risked dropping it. He leaned into Castiel's hand ever so slightly. Castiel was watching him again with intense eyes. Half of Dean wanted to sprint away as fast as his legs would take him, or teleport to someplace far away, or jump off the balcony and hit the ground running. The other half wanted to stay here submerged in the sensation of warmth and safety and affection that flowed between his connection with Cas. That was the half that won.

"It's as though you are a focus point," Castiel said, like Dean were a particularly difficult puzzle he was trying to decipher. He stepped closer, marginally. "A ballast or an anchor, perhaps." Their faces were close together now. Castiel was only shorter by a little; their eye levels were almost equal, their mouths the same. Something that looked like realization flashed over Castiel's face, and Dean found himself fearing that Castiel's powers of perception extended to reading minds and severely hoped—prayed, even—that that was not the case. Castiel's eyes drifted down to Dean's mouth. He swiped his thumb across Dean's bottom lip and back experimentally. Dean released a shaky exhale and his eyes unfocused.

And then Castiel pulled his hand away slowly and withdrew. He watched Dean with a mixture of surprise and confusion and what might have been sadness, until he blinked a few times, his eyes regained their wrinkled tension, and his face became its usual stoic mask once again.

His mouth was set in a hard line as he gave Dean a stiff-necked nod, and then retreated back into the darkness of their room without another word.

* * *

><p>Dean ran through every curse, oath, and profanity he'd acquired in 29 years of life. If Castiel could read minds, which Dean still seriously hoped he couldn't, he was currently being treated to a string of expletives the likes of which could probably be used to strip the paint off a wall.<p>

He'd found Castiel waiting beside the Impala after another few minutes of mild panic during which he'd been almost certain that Castiel had left for good. Castiel's belongings were gone this time and Dean had rushed to pack and checkout until he'd found him. They'd left right away and spent the last two hours in total silence. Dean was starting to regret his coffee-only breakfast.

Dean was in full-on crisis mode. He'd been attracted to plenty of people before. But those people had been almost entirely women. Any men he'd been interested in had been either celebrities (like Robert Downey Jr. or Dr. Sexy, but who could blame him?) or they'd been men he'd met in passing on his trips across the country. And each time, he'd squashed those feelings before they'd truly risen to the surface. Cas, however, could not be squashed so easily.

He was going to be joining Dean and Sam for at least the next few months. In some sick and distant way, Dean was fairly sure Crowley had done something to plan this. But as much as Dean tried to reason his feelings away, he couldn't get Castiel out of his mind. It didn't help that said man was seated directly beside him the entire time that he was attempting to work through these thoughts, and then of course there was the small matter of the 100% non-metaphorical magic that seemed to flow through them when they touched, since apparently magic was real now. That was definitely a factor.

The traffic was getting denser as they neared New York. When they came to a standstill, Dean finally turned to look at Castiel. He was squinting more than usual and the ridges between his eyebrows were especially deep, an expression that Dean was beginning to recognize as distress. He wondered if it was what had happened earlier that day that was affecting him or if it was the number of people in the cars surrounding them, or maybe the number of people who had died on this particular stretch of road, or even some other influx of information was overloading Castiel's senses. Either way, he took a gamble on the solution.

Castiel looked down at the hand that Dean was offering him, either startled or debating. Then he took it with his own and visibly relaxed as those sensations of calm safety drifted over Dean with growing familiarity. They each turned to face the front windshield once again in unbroken muteness, but their fingers remained intertwined.


End file.
